To be exact about it, before anything else, check that the lot number on the certificate matches the vial in your hand — that traces back to your material and not to some other lot from some other date.
Batch versus lot is a semantic distinction that determines whether one certificate applies to ten vials or to one, and checking this distinction is worth a minute.
Mechanically, comparison across certificates from different laboratories is almost never valid, even when the material is the same, because the methods are almost never the same.
The standards that exist in this space — ICH Q3A, Q3B and various pharmacopoeial chapters — are worth reading once even if nothing you test is obliged to meet them.
The caveat is that a certificate is not a guarantee, it is a data point, and treating it as anything else is asking for disappointment.
My working rule is that a document without a lot number, a method section and a test date is marketing.
edited 14 Mar 2026 by bac_or_bust — corrected a unit error in the worked example
8Worth adding that the method section is where the answer usually is. – sian_llewellyn 9 months ago add a comment